House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge

Eclipsing the traditional sports memoir, House of Nails, by former world champion, multimillionaire entrepreneur, and imprisoned felon Lenny Dykstra, spins a tragicomic tale of Shakespearean proportions - a relentlessly entertaining American epic that careens between the heights and the abyss. Nicknamed "Nails" for his hustle and grit, Lenny approached the game of baseball - and life - with mythic intensity.

Teammate: My Journey in Baseball and a World Series for the Ages

In 2016 the Cubs snapped a 108-year curse, winning the World Series in a history-making, seven-game series against the Cleveland Indians. Of the many storylines to Chicago's fairytale season, one stood out: the late-career renaissance of David Ross, the 39-year-old catcher who had played back-up for 13 of his 15 pro seasons. Beyond Ross's remarkably strong play, he became the ultimate positive force in the Cubs locker room, mentoring and motivating his fellow players, some of them nearly 20 years his junior.

Ballplayer

Before Chipper Jones became an eight-time All-Star who amassed Hall of Fame-worthy statistics during a 19-year career with the Atlanta Braves, he was just a country kid from small-town Pierson, Florida. A kid who grew up playing baseball in the backyard with his dad, dreaming that one day he'd be a major league ballplayer. With his trademark candor and astonishing recall, Chipper Jones tells the story of his rise to the MLB ranks and what it took to stay with one organization his entire career in an era of booming free agency.

Doc: A Memoir

A brutally honest memoir of talent, addiction, and recovery from one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time. As a shy 19-year-old, Dwight Gooden swept into New York, lifting a team of crazy characters to World Series greatness and giving a beleaguered city a reason to believe. Then he threw it all away. Now, with fresh and sober eyes, the Mets’ beloved Dr. K shares the intimate details of his life and career, revealing all the extraordinary highs and lows: The hidden traumas in his close-knit Tampa family. The thrill and pressure of being a young baseball phenom in New York.

The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse

With inside access and reporting, Sports Illustrated senior baseball writer and FOX Sports analyst Tom Verducci reveals how Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon built, led, and inspired the Chicago Cubs team that broke the longest championship drought in sports, chronicling their epic journey to become World Series champions.

The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter

Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stance and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the world’s most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn’t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America’s game.

The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch That Changed My Life

The Phenomenon is the story of how St. Louis Cardinals prodigy Rick Ankiel lost his once-in-a-generation ability to pitch - due not to an injury or a bolt of lightning but to a mysterious anxiety condition widely known as "the Yips". It came without warning in the middle of a playoff game, with millions of people watching. And it has never gone away.

Pete Rose: An American Dilemma

Pete Rose played baseball with a singular and headfirst abandon that endeared him to fans and peers, even as it riled others--a figure at once magnetic, beloved and polarizing. Rose has more base hits than anyone in history, yet he is not in the Hall of Fame. Twenty-five years ago he was banished from baseball for gambling, then ruled ineligible for Cooperstown; today, the question "Does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame?" has evolved into perhaps the most provocative in sports, a layered, slippery and ever-relevant moral conundrum.

Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution

Most people who resist logical thought in baseball preach "tradition" and "respecting the game". But many of baseball's traditions go back to the 19th century, when the pitcher's job was to provide the batter with a ball he could hit and fielders played without gloves. Instead of fearing change, Brian Kenny wants fans to think critically, reject outmoded groupthink, and embrace the changes that have come with the "sabermetric era".

Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV

Sports fans see Joe Buck everywhere: broadcasting one of the biggest games in the NFL every week, calling the World Series every year, announcing the Super Bowl every three years. They know his father, Jack Buck, is a broadcasting legend and that he was beloved in his adopted hometown of St. Louis. Yet they have no idea who Joe really is. Or how he got here. In Lucky Bastard, Joe takes the listener into the broadcast booth and into his childhood home. Hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking, this is a book that any sports fan will love.

The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse

In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

No immortal in the history of baseball retired so young, so well, or so completely as Sandy Koufax. After compiling a remarkable record from 1962 to 1966 that saw him lead the National League in ERA all five years, win three Cy Young awards, and pitch four no-hitters including a perfect game, Koufax essentially disappeared. Save for his induction into the Hall of Fame and occasional appearances at the Dodgers training camp, Koufax has remained unavailable, unassailable, and unsullied.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball reveals a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

Belichick and Brady: Two Men, the Patriots, and How They Revolutionized Football

Featuring interviews from Patriots players and coaches, Holley presents a fascinating portrait of the partnership between Tom Brady, the Patriots' star quarterback, and Bill Belichick, the team's prolific coach. Chock-full of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and information exploring how they have strategized and weathered controversies, all culminating in four Super Bowl rings, this is required listening for any Patriots fan and students of the game of football.

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series

In 1919, American headlines proclaimed the fix and cover-up of the World Series as "the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America." In this painstaking review, Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the scandal, in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation’s leading gamblers to throw the series to Cincinnati. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial.

The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron

In the 34 years since his retirement, Henry Aaron's reputation has only grown in magnitude: he broke existing records (rbis, total bases, extra-base hits) and set new ones (hitting at least 30 home runs per season15 times, becoming the first player in history to hammer 500 home runs and 3000 hits). But his influence extends beyond statistics, and at long last here is the first definitive biography of one of baseball's immortal figures.

QB: My Life Behind the Spiral

In the most candid and compelling sports memoir since Andre Agassi's riveting bestseller Open, former San Francisco 49er, Super Bowl champion, NFL MVP, and Hall of Famer Steve Young gives listeners an unprecedented and stunning inside look at what it takes to become a super-elite professional quarterback.

Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball

Predictably Irrational meets Moneyball in ESPN veteran writer and statistical analyst Keith Law's iconoclastic look at the numbers game of baseball, proving why some of the most trusted stats are surprisingly wrong, explaining what numbers actually work, and exploring what the rise of Big Data means for the future of the sport.

Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty

Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don't tell half of Cobb's tale. The Georgia Peach was by far the most thrilling player of the era: "Ty Cobb could cause more excitement with a base on balls than Babe Ruth could with a grand slam," one columnist wrote.

The Yankee Years

Joe Torre is the most successful and most respected baseball manager of the modern era, steering the Yankees to six American League pennants and four World Series championships. When he left the team in 2007, it was front-page news around the country. Famously diplomatic during his tenure with the Yankees, Torre finally speaks out about what it was like building and managing the dynasty during those 12 glorious and tumultuous years.

Kiss and Make-Up

There would have been no KISS without Gene Simmons, the outrageous star whose superlong tongue, legendary sexual exploits, and demonic makeup have made him a rock icon. KISS and Make-Up is the wild, shocking, unbelievable story, from the man himself, about how an immigrant boy from Israel studied to be a rabbi, was saved by rock and roll, and became one of the most notorious rock stars the world has ever seen.

The Ghost Army of World War II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy with Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery

In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs - including such future luminaries as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey - landed in France to conduct a secret mission. Armed with truckloads of inflatable tanks, a massive collection of sound-effects records, and more than a few tricks up their sleeves, their job was to create a traveling road show of deception on the battlefields of Europe, with the German Army as their audience.

Michael Jordan: The Life

When most people think of Michael Jordan, they think of the beautiful shots, his body totally in sync with the ball, hitting nothing but net. He is responsible for incredible moments so ingrained in basketball history that they have their own names: The Shrug, The Shot, The Flu Game. But for all his greatness, there's also a dark side to Jordan: A ruthless competitor, a gambler. There's never been a biography that balanced these personas-until now.

Assisted: An Autobiography

A fast, gritty, durable player who could read a basketball floor as well as anyone who ever played the game, John Stockton left the NBA after 19 seasons with the Utah Jazz, holding a massive assist record, including the career mark (15,806). He also twice led the league in steals - with a career total of 3,265 - and retired as the NBA's all-time leader. And during Stockton's career, the Jazz never missed the playoffs.

Publisher's Summary

Mike Piazza’s autobiography - the candid story of the greatest hitting catcher in the history of baseball, from his inauspicious draft selection to his Hall of Fame-worthy achievements, and the unusual controversies that marked his career.

Mike Piazza was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 62nd round of the 1988 baseball draft as a "courtesy pick". The Dodgers never expected him to play for them - or anyone else. Mike had other ideas. Overcoming his detractors, he became the National League Rookie of the Year in 1993, broke the record for season batting average by a catcher, holds the record for career home runs at his position, and was selected as an All Star 12 times.

Mike was groomed for baseball success by his ambitious, self-made father in Pennsylvania, a classic father-son American-dream story. With the Dodgers, Piazza established himself as baseball’s premier offensive catcher; but the team never seemed willing to recognize him as the franchise player he was. He joined the Mets and led them to the memorable 2000 World Series with their cross-town rivals, the Yankees. Mike tells the story behind his dramatic confrontation with Roger Clemens in that series. He addresses the steroid controversy that hovered around him and Major League Baseball during his time and provides valuable perspective on the subject. Mike also addresses the rumors of being gay and describes the thrill of his game-winning home run on September 21, 2001, the first baseball game played in New York after the 9/11 tragedy. Along the way, he tells terrific stories about teammates and rivals that baseball fans will devour.

Long Shot is told with insight, candor, humor, and charm. It’s surprising and inspiring, one of the great sports autobiographies.

Where does Long Shot rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Right up there! Its a great book

What was one of the most memorable moments of Long Shot?

Finally coming to the realization that i only thought i knew the story of one of my favorite catchers of all time

Which scene was your favorite?

I loved the story of Ted Williams showing up in the Piazza driveway to watch a young Mike hit

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

How to build a future Hall of Fame catcher

Any additional comments?

If you love Baseball, you owe it to yourself to use a credit to learn the real story of Mike Piazza. i really have a whole new respect for Mike now, and even before listening to this book he was my all time favorite catcher.

If you love baseball stories and overcoming adversity, this book is for you. He takes you from his early days hitting balls in his backyard right through the major league. Amazing how such a standout player can be overlooked by everyone in baseball, as he was drafted as a favor to his father in the 62nd round by the LA Dodgers. His hard work, perseverance, and belief in himself eventually carried the day. Mikes's language can be a little rough at times for very young readers, but it does fit the context of his story. I especially liked it because Mike is the narrator which makes it more personal. Aspiring young players will get a mental boost from listening to this program.

Great book. I was a little worried at the beginning when piazza was reading the book himself, but that subsided by chapter two. Excellent insight into the mindset that it takes to compete at the games highest level when he(piazza) was the one who knew he could.

Where does Long Shot rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

In the top 10

What was one of the most memorable moments of Long Shot?

I watched Piazza through his career and enjoy knowing the inside stuff. Listening to this book brought back a lot of memories. Wasn't just any one thing, but the tales of his interactions with Eric Karros gave a chuckle. I laughed out loud at many of them.

Which character – as performed by Holter Graham and Mike Piazza – was your favorite?

I loved that Mike was very candid about his career and treatment. I have been a fellow fan for years and always wondered what makes him tick and what he was thinking in the moments that made baseball history. I lived the moments as a fan going to the Met games that he is describing and had a breat time reliving them now.

Getting to learn a little more about one of my favorite Baseball players. Reminiscing about the days the Mets were winning.

Which scene was your favorite?

The recap of the grand slam single. Also the review of the 9/11 game brought back memories and gave me goose bumps.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

A long shot with a big bat.

Any additional comments?

I'm a Piazza fan. I enjoyed the heck out of the book. I think Mike did a great job of explaining a lot of his thought process, as well as having some of my questions concerning the Mets and Piazza answered.Lets face it if the hall does not call... "There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us."Last but not least... LETS GO METS!!

Listening was fine - the book is long. The story is not worth hearing. I'm a huge Met fan and have been my enitre life. Mike was one of my favorite players during his era. I actually have a bobblehead on my desk of him. However, he comes across as a total jerk throughout the book. He gets along with nobody and can never comprhend why? Really? How about some self awareness - if everyone thinks you are a jerk - then maybe you are a jerk. Really disappoining to hear the whinning and crying of a millionaire.

Would you ever listen to anything by Mike Piazza and Lonnie Wheeler again?

Lonnie yes, Mike no.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

After awhile Lonnie became Mike. He did a nice job

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Long Shot?

I wanted my son to hear the story (he is 10) but its laced with f-bombs. For what reason I have no idea. Maybe Mike wanted to sound tough.

Any additional comments?

Spoiler alert. Mike was a great player. Mike was a jerk that nobody liked. Mike complains about that fact the entire book. Mike wants more money because he is great. Mike denies rumors. Could have been a short story.